L1 Glossing and Lexical Inferencing: Evaluation of the Overarching Issue of L1 Lexicalization

Abstract

This empirical study reports on a cross-linguistic analysis of the overarching issue of L1 lexicalization regarding two (non)-interventionist approaches to vocabulary teaching. Participants were seventy four juniors at the Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch in Tehran. The investigation pursued (i) the impact of the provided (non)-interventionist treatments on both sets of (non)-lexicalized items relatrd to the interrelationships between the experimental and the control groups (ii) the importance of the cross-linguistic issue of L1 lexicalization in reference to the significance of the difference between the scores obtained for the two sets of (non)-lexicalized items within each group distinctively. The results of the independent t-test between the two groups indicated a significant difference between the experimental and control groups dealing with both sets of vocabulary items. The obtained findings related to the paired t-test demonstrated a significant difference between the scores achieved for the two sets of words in favor of lexicalized items in the interventionist group. The gained results of the non-interventionist inferencing group demonstrated that the learners had greater familiarity with lexicalized items at pre-testing, and they were more successful in learning lexicalized items compared with non-lexicalized ones at post-testing. However, no significant difference was found regarding the gain scores for the two sets of (non)-lexicalized items in the non-interventionist group. These findings are discussed both theoretically and practically for L2 lexical representation and instruction.